Obsession: A shocking psychological thriller where love affairs turn deadly

by Amanda Robson

  One day soon, I promise, I will let Jenni go.

  ~ Jenni ~

  Everyone is here for Sunday lunch, filling my small flat-above-a-shop with chattering and laughter. Everyone except Craig.

  Craig is not on the guest list.

  Heather and my father sit at one end of my makeshift dining table, MDF on top of breeze-blocks, and Rob and I sit at the other, Pippa and the Gospels filling the space between us. Our puppy, Charlie, is sitting beneath the table licking the hand of whoever gives him the largest titbits. I am pretending not to notice. I have painted my face with my best make-up and Rob swallows me with his eyes, watching me wherever I go.

  Turkey breast rolled in bacon. Gratin dauphinoise. Roast potatoes and parsnips. Red cabbage. Ratatouille. Wine jus, not gravy. Yorkshire pudding perfectly risen, baked to a crust. And for me, the resident vegetarian, ricotta soufflé.

  The table looks fantastic. A white linen tablecloth with a red chiffon table runner – candles, napkins, and flowers. Christmas, but not Christmas. The whole hog. The whole nine yards.

  I serve up with the help of Heather and Pippa. Rob carves. When the plates are piled high with steaming food, I raise a toast.

  ‘To Pippa and the Gospels.’

  The children raise their Ribena goblets, the adults raise their claret, and a rush of warmth fills my heart. We sit and eat and silence falls. Rob is stabbing his fork into some red cabbage. He looks up at me and our smiles meet. It is like that with Rob and I; our smiles often meet.

  Pippa leaves her food and comes to sit on my knee. She strokes my cheek.

  ‘If our mummy doesn’t come home, will you be our mum instead so that we can have a puppy?’

  Rob’s face freezes. Heather and Rob lock eyes for a second.

  ‘Of course Mummy’s coming home,’ he says violently.

  I just smile, and continue to stroke Pippa’s hair.

  ~ Carly ~

  When I have let Jenni go, they will let me come home. But it is Jenni who I still dwell on, in spite of everything. What do I mean, in spite of everything? It all happened because of Jenni.

  I am up and dressed, sitting in my chair, dwelling on her long brown hair and muddy eyes. On her thin snapping bones. On her kindness. On her laugh. She is my friend, not my enemy. My friend. That is all she ever has been. Nothing more. Nothing less. Not even to Rob. Rob and Jenni. A concept that doesn’t exist. That never existed. Dr Willis is helping me reprogramme my brain to accept this. With breathing exercises, and talking therapy. With self-help books and a double dose of Prozac.

  Sitting in my chair in my hospital room, with its lack of colour and minimal comfort, an image forms in front of me. Rob arriving for his morning surgery, wearing his pale grey suit, the one I helped him choose in the sales. Striding past reception, past Jenni who is answering the phone. She waves her right hand as he passes. He nods. And that is all. No deepthroat eye contact. No pouting lips. No lingering glances. Just a man on his way to work, and his receptionist. Jenni and Rob. Friends. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  The image keeps rolling in front of me. Jenni finishes her telephone call and gets up from her chair. She smooths her skirt and runs her fingers through her hair. She grabs her handbag and saunters out of reception to the staff toilet, where she adjusts her make-up. Kohl eye pencil and teenage lip gloss. Jenni, you are too old for that look. She brushes her hair until it shines like a conker. Then she sprays perfume at all of her pulse points, and shakes her hair as she looks in the mirror, like a model in a shampoo advert. What are you doing, Jenni? Bitch-whore Jenni?

  ‘Watch me, Carly, watch me, I’ll show you. Like you and Craig showed me.’

  She enters Rob’s consulting room and locks the door behind her. His face lights up as soon as he sees her. They are making out, eating each other, mouths wide like hungry lions, removing each other’s clothing in a frenzy. They look as if they are high on drugs. Rob tears Jenni’s blouse. Jenni pushes him backwards into his consulting chair and goes down on him, chestnut hair spilling over his thighs. A blowjob. Always a blowjob? Jenni, can’t you think of anything else? He strokes her head as he comes. His tenderness makes me feel sick. Really sick.

  I close my eyes so tight that I am pressing my eyeballs against my skull. I need to push their image away. I must. I must make it go. It is an image. It isn’t real. It isn’t what’s happening. Even though it’s so clear, I know it isn’t happening.

  I stand up and open my eyes. Jenni and Rob have gone. The silence of my hospital room presses against me. Silence washes through my mind and soothes me. I reach for my handbag and pad towards the bathroom. Once inside, I lock the door and sit on the toilet seat wrapped in bruised yellow light, fumbling in my handbag to find my purse. With trembling fingers I find Jenni’s photograph, carefully stored in the side pocket. I sit looking at the photograph and I am back on the day it was taken, when we were both heavily pregnant with our first boys; the first half of the Gospels. A day out with Pippa, to the beach, swinging her along between us; every time we raised her feet from the sand, she put her head back and roared like a lion. Pippa always liked you, Jenni.

  Do you remember?

  Jenni, I am not going to let the ogre you have become inside me keep haunting me. The tremor in my hands increases as I rummage through my bag to find the matches I found in the TV lounge last week. I light one and set fire to the corner of your photo. The flame catches but struggles to survive. A curling orange edge slowly chews your face away.

  A face that is no longer a face, but a carcass of ash.

  ~ Rob ~

  Jenni and I sit in church together on the front row, the vicar energising us from the pulpit. I want to hold her hand but I mustn’t. I think about Carly with her pale stretched face, and my fist clenches. Thou shall not commit adultery. Thou shall not commit adultery.

  Carly committed it first.

  After church we walk along the river, Jenni and I, Pippa and the Gospels. A soft September day, the river a kaleidoscope of silver and grey. Pushing past willow and beech trees whose sun-toasted leaves are turning crisp and golden, twisting and falling thick as the first snow. The children are well ahead. Bikes and scooters. Shouting and laughter. On the way to the tea-shop by the bridge. This time I cannot stop myself. I take Jenni’s hand in mine and pull her towards me. Red cherry lips stick to mine.

  ~ Rob ~

  Dr Willis has asked to see me. To see him at a time that suits him I’ve had to pay a locum to cover me at the surgery, which is why I’m irritated that he’s late. I guess it’s also personal pride that is niggling me; his time apparently more important than mine.

  He’s finally condescended to arrive and I am being escorted to his NHS hospital consulting room by a nurse in a stripy uniform. She knocks on the door on my behalf. A muffled, ‘Come in,’ reaches us.

  She opens the door but only I step through the doorway. She retraces her steps along the corridor, leaving the faintest whiff of her perfume on the air.

  ‘I’m so sorry I kept you waiting,’ he says with a tired smile as soon as he sees me.

  ‘No problem,’ I reply, charmingly. Sometimes my hypocrisy worries me. It certainly used to bug Carly.

  Carly. The person we are here to talk about. My stomach knots.

  ‘Do sit down,’ Dr Willis instructs, gesticulating towards a 1960s Scandinavian chair that has seen better days, waiting for me in front of his desk.

  I sink into it.

  What does he want to see me about? What is he going to say?

  He is sitting watching me with tight brown eyes, so tight they look like hazelnuts. He is a leathery man, a bit like Paul Hogan’s Dundee, always wearing his strange crocodile-skin boots like a trophy. He has a tanned face, cracked with wrinkles, and a most unfortunate comb-over. He leans back in his chair and folds his arms.

  I hear the distant roar of an aeroplane. An ambulance siren. Someone whistling in the corridor. Dr Willis swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple move up and down in his throat. He straigh
tens his back.

  ‘As you know, your wife’s illness is very complicated,’ he begins. ‘Her depression, her low self-esteem, her alcoholism,’ he pauses for breath, ‘mixed with paranoia and sex addiction.’

  His words push towards me and make me feel desperate. I know what he is telling me is true. But still, it upsets me to hear it wrapped together so clinically. There is no room in this description for the woman I fell in love with. No room for the fun, for the life, for the love.

  He leans forwards, fixing his squirrel eyes on mine.

  ‘It’s the sex addiction that I want to talk about. How much of it have you observed?’

  ‘I found it very difficult when I realised she’d been sleeping with an old friend of ours.’

  He nods. ‘Ah. I expect having an extra-marital affair was a manifestation of her illness, Rob. I’d advise you not to confront her about it. I fear it would damage her recovery process. Your approval of her is paramount. Paramount.’

  I sit staring at him.

  He is looking at me, beady eyed, like a bossy teacher. Trying to make me feel as if I’m at school again. I lean back in my chair to pull away from him. ‘Thank you for all your help. I can’t wait to get her home.’

  As soon as I’ve thanked him, his chest puffs out like a prize peacock.

  Carly, how come this arrogant bastard has helped you so much when I couldn’t? What has he got that I’ve not?’

  ~ Carly ~

  My drug regimen is stable and my consultant wants me to return to my normal life now – completely, and as soon as possible – despite the debacle when I set the hospital smoke alarm off. In six months’ time he wants me off all medicine completely.

  Getting to this point has not been easy. I have been in a dark place. A place I thought I would never escape. They say everyone who recovers has experienced a lowest moment – a point from which they know they have to pull away. How can I describe to anyone the abyss, the fear I was living in? The swimming through a never-ending tunnel of darkness, and then, after months of both drug and talking therapy, the light starting to shine in front of me, pulling me forwards, bathing me in a veneer of normality; occasionally able to laugh with Rob, to talk to my mother and care about what she was saying. To enjoy myself.

  Beginning to forgive Jenni. Not that she had done anything. I had nothing to forgive. I was being paranoid about her. Catastrophising, the consultant calls it, catastrophising about her effect on Rob. And now I have moved away from the darkness that was engulfing me, I am her friend again, wanting to help her, wanting to protect her, just like I always did. Just like everyone else does.

  Jenni has been coming to visit me here every week, as part of my recovery process. It has been good of her to spare time for me. But then I would have done the same for her, wouldn’t I? We sit together in the TV room at the side of the ward overlooking the car park, and a nurse brings us lukewarm cups of weak tea in blue NHS cups. The first time she came, we just sat drinking tea and smiling at each other periodically. Her fringe had been cut in a layered, rounded edged, pudding basin way. The rest of her hair had grown long and jaunty, flicking up slightly at the end – a cross between Sandy Shaw in her heyday and an Egyptian princess. Wearing plum nail varnish, which shone in the striped light dappling through the venetian blinds, and no make-up. Her skin is so smooth, she doesn’t need it. My breath resonated through my chest as I looked at her and exhaled. I wasn’t up to saying much. As she left she squeezed my hand and told me it had been good to see me.

  She continued to visit. Slowly, gradually, over the weeks we began to chat. I laughed once again when she referred to the boys as the Gospels. My stomach began to ache when she told me how lonely her father was. One day I reached across and stroked her pretty hair. Chocolate silk infused with the scent of honey. My friend is back where I guess she always was. Loving me, supporting me.

  And now I am sitting in my room next to my stripped bed and packed suitcase, listening to the distinctive sound of Dr Willis walking down the ward towards me, boots clicking on tiled flooring. Even the tap of his feet sounds confident. Dr Willis wears a bow tie; people who wear bow ties always seem to brim with confidence and make me feel rather tired. He pulls up another chair from the next room and sits next to me, leaning close. An enthusiastic smile. Alligator teeth.

  ‘Well Carly, this is it. Are you ready?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘That’s not very positive.’

  He leans back in his chair, folding his arms and stretching his legs in front of him.

  ‘I’m a bit scared actually. I’m scared of slipping into a bad place again.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘We’ve been through this so many times. Now you’ve experienced a crisis, you and Rob will be far more aware of the warning signs. You can still see me when you need to, to chew over any problems.’

  He leans across to the end of my bed, whips my chart from its clip, and scratches his signature to confirm my release.

  FOUR

  ~ Carly ~

  In the car with Rob on the way home, the outside world moving past like a cinema screen, every detail sharpened and enhanced. Rain slicing into the puddles on the street. The exhaust from the car in front rising like a cloud painted on canvas. Stansfield moves past me, the high street with its clumsy red brick architecture, functional rather than pretty. The block of flats. The fish shop. The squashed-in surgery, with no more room for development.

  I look across at Rob, sitting with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his leg as we wait at the lights. He seems so distant. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what to ask him. So we sit in silence as we turn left and then right, and park in our drive.

  We manage to get inside before being overwhelmed by a welcome party. Our house seems so luxurious and comfortable after the hospital. Today I will forgive 1930s architects anything, as I enter our sitting room to become a princess in a palace, a palace decorated with balloons and bunting. Balloons and bunting of pink and green. Matt hugs and hugs me, clinging to my legs so that I cannot move. John joins in too. Two sons with untidy blond curls. Two sons sweet enough to eat. My mother, eyes soft with tears, leans across the boys and clings to my chest. They can hug me and kiss me for as long as they like. I can never have too much of it.

  Pippa looking taller and prettier than ever enters the living room holding a cake with Welcome home Mummy piped in icing on it, in colours to match the room. The cake is so big she is having difficulty carrying it, arms stretched, biting her lip as she concentrates, walking, slowly, slowly towards the coffee table. She places it down with a bang.

  ‘Look what Daddy and I made, Mummy. You weren’t home in time for my birthday, so I decided we should have cake today.’

  Alone together in our bedroom, anticipation hangs heavily in the air between us. Rob steps towards me.

  ‘Are you feeling tired?’ he asks.

  I shake my head and start to get undressed. He helps me, undoing my bra and kissing me. A shy kiss, testing me, as if he has forgotten what I taste like. I melt towards him and now he is hungry, he is greedy, pulling my clothes off, pushing me towards the bed, opening my legs with his knee, penetrating my mouth with his tongue. We are both naked. His lips are on my breasts, his fingers playing with the bud of my clitoris. A slipstream of sensation overwhelms me. His tongue is strumming me. His fingers are everywhere and nowhere. I do not know where. And now he is inside me and I am climaxing. A climax so intense it hurts, and before I have reached my final crescendo, he is joining me, thrusting and moaning.

  We finish and lie tangled together, sticky with the scent of sex.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whisper, and drift into a restless sleep.

  The night is long and refreshing. Every time I wake up I relish Rob’s arms around me. The comfort of my own bed. The wetness between my legs. Shapes shrouded with familiarity moving towards me in semi-darkness; my dressing table, my wardrobe. M
y family alive and breathing all around me.

  At last morning slices around the curtain edges, and I throw the covers off and get out of bed. So much to do. No time to waste. On a neon high. Everything around me electric. The shower cuts into me as I wash. When I look out of the bedroom window I see the sun sharpening across the bushes in the garden. My bedroom is bright and beautiful, every photograph on my dressing table poignant, every ornament priceless. What are you on, woman? What are you on?

  My mother cooks breakfast for me: scrambled eggs on toast. Gourmet, obviously. Michelin-star material. And as I am tucking in watching Pippa, Matt and John wolfing down their Frosties, I want to scoop them in my arms and hold them there forever. What happened to me? Why had I stopped appreciating this?

  ~ Carly ~

  My mother takes the children to school and I walk around the corner to the surgery, holding Rob’s hand. He doesn’t want me to start work yet. He wants me to readjust slowly. But I have insisted. After two weeks at home, despite my post-hospital high, I am frightened I will stagnate. His palm feels hot in mine as we move, past the charity shops, past the pharmacy, past the Chinese restaurant until the surgery unfolds in front of us. Riverside Surgery, looking better maintained than I remember. Even the bricks look cleaner. The plants in the small garden at the front look more exotic. Into the reception, where he drops my hand. As soon as Sharon sees me she hugs me, wrapping me in the reassurance of her kindness and her plumpness. Wrapping me in her scent of violets and lavender.

  After greetings and good wishes are over, I walk along the corridor to my consulting room. It is just as I left it, except for the new bouquet of flowers to welcome me back, standing in a cut glass vase by the autoclave. The chair by the window where the patients sit to receive their injections still needs re-covering. The fridge still hums as if it is about to break down. My shelf of medical journals and books still needs tidying.